


Harry Potter and the False Start

by talktoten



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Mystery, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-03-21 17:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13746114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talktoten/pseuds/talktoten
Summary: Harry Potter finally awakes in 1998, after spending eight years in a coma. His glasses are there, folded carefully and perched on the edge of his bedside table. This is Harry's first clue that something is amiss, because as well as the rust that is beginning to gather in the hinges of his glasses and the dust that has settled deep-set into their frames, there is the sellotape.





	1. Eyes Wide Open

Harry Potter opened his eyes after eight long years to find that the lights above him were winking at him, in that friendly way he had grown familiar with over his multiple visits to Madam Pomfrey's hospital wing. Harry felt very hazy. This was not the first time that he had awoken in a hospital bed with no clue as to how he had arrived there, but surely - surely - he ought to remember something? He blinked wearily up at the lights like he might persuade them to stop their brilliant bursting each time that he blinked (someone had removed his glasses), then - out of sheer habit - reached over to his bedside table to see if he could find his glasses. His arms ached with the movement, a thousand times more heavy than he had thought it possible for them to be.

His glasses were there, folded carefully and perched on the edge of his bedside table, which was actually a little set of drawers. This was Harry's first clue that something was amiss, because as well as the rust that was beginning to gather in the hinges of his glasses and the dust that had settled, deep-set, into the frames, there was the sello-tape. When Harry had been young, his cousin Dudley and his friends used to chase him all around their primary school, as Harry was rather good at escaping (this had been, Harry had later discovered, due to his magical abilities), and he had generously allowed the overlarge boys the opportunity to exercise aerobically before getting stuck into their favourite form of exercise: punching him on the nose. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had purchased a roll of sello-tape which had become a staple optometrist's tool around the house until he had first travelled to Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft and Wizardry when he was 11 years old. Hogwarts' teachers - especially Professor McGonagall - had not, on the whole, stood for his limited sight, and had seen the glasses immediately repaired with a wordless wave of their wand. (Harry's own wand, he noticed only later, wasn't there at all; he couldn't find it).

To find the sello-tape there, at the bridge of his glasses (and at the arms), made Harry's heart do an odd sort of somersaulting flutter, and then it dropped into his stomach so solidly he could have sworn he felt it. Now that he was properly looking around, he was beginning to feel very concerned about things. He was in a Muggle hospital, for one thing - and usually, and Harry did not like to think it because it made him feel very big-headed, usually, when he found himself hospitalised, there was at least one get-well card. People being worried about him - wishing him well - had become the new norm, since he had very first stepped foot into the wizarding world; had nobody thought to send a card? Some sweets? Perhaps to come in, and keep him company? It wasn't like Harry didn't have anyone to miss him. Besides, what were the odds that he'd come into a hospital - even a Muggle one - and gone completely unnoticed?

Surely, there had been a mistake. There was no way that the Weasleys knew where he was and hadn't sent so much as a lime-green, well-intentioned jumper. Even Harry didn't know where he was. Now that he looked for it, he found the writing on the wall fairly easily:

**ROYAL FREE**  
_world class expertise - local care_

Royal Free, Harry knew, was a low-cost hospital (as the name implied) located in London. Light was filtering in through the small window, through which Harry was sure he could see the entirety of Camden, if he tried hard enough. The light helped to illuminate the otherwise dim, but sterile, ward, which seemed to house his own and several other beds, though if anyone else was awake then they hadn't any visitors, either; it was silent. The curtains were drawn on either side of his bed.

"Hullo?" he tried, into the quiet, and was surprised by how hoarse his voice sounded. He had to try twice more to get the word out as anything more than a croaky whisper, suddenly aware of how dry his mouth was. When had that happened?

Nobody answered him, anyway.

Harry pressed the NURSE CALL button, once he finally decided that sitting there and wondering (with that same, unfounded knot of dread in his stomach) wasn't going to achieve much besides worrying him more. He was just beginning to wonder if he could telephone Hermione (who had, among his wizarding friends, a much better hold on telephones and their function than Harry had ever thought to appreciate) when a short, squat nurse came bustling in, looking more harried than even Harry was. He didn't seem to expect to find anyone in the room - he barely threw a glance into Harry's bed before attempting to exit again, and stopped dead in his tracks when he found Harry there.

Nurse Clougherty was a round-faced and pimply nursing student (Harry guessed, at least), with long dark hair he'd tied into an elegant, low ponytail so that it gathered at his waist. He wore a pale blue nursing uniform with the name of the hospital, and its reddish logo, stamped on its breast. On the sight of him, alone, Harry felt a sudden, inexplicable rush of recognition, a familiarity that he couldn't place - vaguely, he thought that he must have met this man before.

"You're awake," Nurse Clougherty told him, shock colouring his voice.

Harry felt his face heat up, though he could not pinpoint why this was such a surprising revelation. "Yeah," he said, a bit defensively.

Nurse Clougherty didn't seem to know what to say to that, immediately, so he became extremely interested in the clipboard at the end of Harry's bed for a moment. A patient file.

"Sorry," said Harry, after a couple of minutes of this, "Can you tell me where I am?"

Nurse Clougherty looked up. Harry saw a series of emotions wash over his face - first surprise (again, that Harry was still awake), then fear (uncertainty?), then the general professional calm which was trained into every member of staff in the medical field. "My name is Nurse Clougherty," Nurse Clougherty told him, gently. Harry sat up a little straighter in bed, feeling a bit annoyed by how gentle Clougherty was being (after all, he wasn't fragile). "I've been your nurse for a few years now. You're in the Royal -"

"A few years?" Harry blurted, although he hadn't meant to.

Clougherty paused for a moment to check that Harry was finished, then continued, "- the Royal Free Hospital, in London. Everything's alright, Harry. You're very safe - you're okay, medically. Now that you're awake we'll need to do a few last checks, but you're up and talking to me and that's more than anyone could really have hoped for. Raina!" he yelled this out, into the passage - "Call the Dursleys, will you? They're on file."

"I don't want anyone to call my family," Harry inserted, flatly. He and the Dursleys had never been on the best terms, and he did not want to explain to any of his friends why he had called for his aunt and uncle before his best friends, or girlfriend. Clougherty didn't seem to make any note of this, so Harry pressed: "Can you tell me what happened?"

The man's face reddened, perhaps as he realised that he'd neglected to mention anything about it, as of yet. "There was an accident," Clougherty said, "you - well, you were - when you were eleven ... nobody really knows what happened - you must have been running for some reason, maybe you were going to miss your train. All we know is, you ended up taking quite a knock to your head. The swelling was quite substantial - nobody was ever really sure ... it was your Aunt, that saved you, wasn't it? She refused to take you off life support for the first leg of it - so upset."

Harry was a bit skeptical. **_"My_** Aunt Petunia?"

"Petunia, yeah. That's it. She visits, sometimes. Once a year, in October - Halloween."

Halloween had been the night that Harry's parents - and Aunt Petunia's sister - had died at the hand of the greatest (and worst) Dark Wizard of his time, Lord Voldemort. Harry reached up a hand for the thin, lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, absently rubbing at it as he thought hard about everything he'd just learned.

"You were in a coma, Mr Dursley," Clougherty concluded.

"What?" Harry asked, entirely caught by surprise. "I'm Harry Potter."

Clougherty finally decided there was no point beating around the bush: "It's been eight years. The Dursleys thought it was best to, er - formalise the ... adoption process, just in case-"

"They're not like that." Harry felt the entirety of the world tilt away from him. The idea that the Dursleys had ever once thought to include him in their family was laughable - it was a wonder they hadn't just left him there to die on the street. Still, eight years... it came back into his head in an instant. At once, he was dizzy - he could feel his heart thumping a marathon in his throat as he asked, "What year is it?"

"I'm not sure I'm the best person-"

"I don't - I don't mind. Really. I just want to know. What year is it? Tell me."

"It's September of 1998, Mr Potter."

Harry surprised even himself when he choked back a sob.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please R&R! This was originally in response to a writing prompt on Reddit, where Harry wakes up 8 years into a coma only to be told that he ran smack-bang into a wall and has been comatose ever since. I'm working around scheduling and my university and work placement etc so I may be a little awful at getting things going, but I do rather like this story. Trying to write a little bit every night!


	2. NRC

The Dursleys did not come to visit Harry. Harry was not too terribly surprised - for Christmas one year, they had gifted him a single fifty-pence piece sello-taped to a piece of paper, and it was still - to Harry's memory - the best gift he'd ever received from home. (It was also, he thought to himself later, not even a real present; he had been comatose in bed at the time, and likely had not received a single thing.)

Harry had been moved to the Neurological Rehabilitation Centre at Edgware Community hospital shortly after awakening, following the "handful of tests" Clougherty had promised weren't really important. The nurses here were quite nice, Harry thought, but he was even more closely watched now than he had been in his third year of Hogwarts, when the school had been convinced there was a serial killer (who had turned out to be Harry's innocent godfather, Sirius Black) after him. Once, he had been passing Professor McGonagall in the hallway, who was deep in conversation with Lee Jordan; Harry had sneezed into his sleeve, and he could have sworn he'd heard her mutter, "Bless you," in between one breath and the next. As kind as his nurses were, they held an air about them that they just ought not to be crossed - they did not have the time to deal with troublemakers - and many of them looked so severe and so unlike the matronly Madam Pomfrey that Harry thought it best to stay in bed, at least for the first day. By night-time, they had decided that they had more important patients to bother with, like the very poorly Mrs Mathieu, who spent most of Harry's first day there muttering in French, staring longingly either at Harry or out the window, and making what she must have thought to be very clever escape attempts (as she was so upset each time she was caught), right through the front doors.

At 1:06AM, Harry climbed out of bed. His legs were still rather uncooperative (as were the rest of his limbs), but they seemed to be regaining their strength at a rapid rate - it was almost as rapidly as Harry's hair had regrown after Aunt Petunia had shaved it off, in his childhood. Although he didn't have a plan as to where he was going (or hadn't put it together in his head, yet, at least), it was not long before Harry found that his feet had steered him straight to the landline telephone of the NRC, perched in the centre of the foyer connecting all fourteen separate rooms. Harry was quite unprepared for this. With a jerk, he realised that he didn't actually know what he was going to do, now that he was here; he couldn't exactly just call up his nonexistent friends and ask them if they were real. It was one in the morning - even if they were real, somehow, who was going to answer the phone at this time of day?

He didn't know what he would do if he tried to call Hermione and someone else answered. How would he explain that he had called them at this hour, in secret, from a neuro rehab centre to check who they were, without sounding completely mad?

The sleek black receiver of the phone stared at him, accusingly, and Harry wished - not for the first time - that he knew how to bewitch inanimate objects, so that he could ask it what to do. His heart was hammering in his chest. There was nothing for it - he would have to call her. He couldn't just stand here and wait for the stern nurses to come back from wherever they went - to change shift, presumably.

The dial tone patiently waited for him to pluck up his courage (suddenly terrified), and then he punched in Hermione's telephone number and held the receiver to his ear before he had the chance to change his mind. It rang through, and Harry's heart inexplicably soared (it had rung! This was a real number, no matter who it belonged to), and on the sheer encouragement that ringtone had provided Harry pressed the hook down and redialled.

She picked up on the second ring. "Hello?" she asked, sleepily -

"Who is it?" asked a male voice, away from the receiver. It was quickly muffled, and Harry imagined her pushing Ron away ("I don't know, Ronald.")

"Hermione," Harry said, feeling rather dumb, now. He didn't know what to say. He'd not considered this possibility at all. The thrill of recognition had caught him off guard.

There was a long pause.

"Hermione Granger?" Harry pressed.

"Do I know you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please R&R! Sorry this one's short - it's all I had time to write for tonight. More when I can <3


	3. Rehabilitation

Harry’s recovery took place over the course of only one week, which his Muggle doctors and nurses called ‘miraculous’ and one doctor, whom Harry suspected was a squib because of the way she wrinkled her lip like there was something very unpleasant underneath her nose, called ‘very lucky’. It meant that he was ready to be out of hospital by the next Friday, which was good because by the Wednesday he’d already grown rather tired of alternating between eating soggy chips (hospital food - he still wasn’t on to very solid solids, but greasy chips were alright) and reassuring Ms Mathieu that he didn’t know where her friend Henry was. 

Hermione had not known who Harry was, at all. The initial rush of hearing her voice - of knowing that the wizarding world was, at least in some regard, out there - had been quickly quelled; neither Hermione nor Ron had any idea who Harry was, or why he knew their names. The conversation had quickly escalated from initial confusion into rising suspicion, and Harry had felt it best he hang up before they decided that he was not to be trusted - in his mind’s eye he had vividly been able to imagine Hermione hurriedly searching through her books for a tracing spell, trying to stall Harry while she looked. It wasn’t that Harry didn’t want to be found, he reasoned; right in that moment, and in every moment after, he would have given all the soggy chips in Edgware Community Hospital’s cafeteria to have been able to see his friends. 

But these weren’t his friends. This Ron and Hermione hadn’t ever met a young boy with messy hair and a lightning-bolt scar on the train to Hogwarts - Harry had, in actual fact, never even reached the scarlet steam engine he so vividly remembered. Harry had concluded that the incident (running straight into a wall) had taken place at platform nine-and-three-quarters, which meant a handful of things: he had definitely received his acceptance letter, and he’d definitely ventured into Diagon Alley with Hagrid. Hagrid, Harry thought, was the only real person from the wizarding world that he’d met. More than even Ron and Hermione, Harry would have given a lot to know where Hogwarts’ groundskeeper was - Hagrid was real proof that the magical world had not just disappeared whilst Harry was asleep, or vanished while he wasn’t looking. A sick sort of final magic trick. 

Harry didn’t like to spend a lot of time thinking about that sort of thing, because it led to a quite awful knot of worry in his stomach, and it never achieved much. 

Because Harry had had his 18th birthday a little over a month ago, in July (it was now September), the Dursleys were no longer technically responsible for him. He’d not had much contact with his now-adoptive family since awaking, mostly because neither party had had any interest in exposing themselves to the other any longer than was absolutely necessary. 

Harry’s memories of Dudley as an 11-year-old had grown into an increasingly grotesque 18-year-old Dudley Dursley, who had about as much neck as his father and was about as kind; if Harry was in a coma then Dudley had never been attacked by Dementors (and Dementors may not even have existed), and he could have grown up entirely influenced by his parents’ dislike for anything strange, or unusual. Something as peculiar as a magical orphan cousin who had been visited by a half-giant shortly before becoming comatose would, understandably, have never crossed Dudley’s mind as something - or someone - to expose himself to. The Uncle Vernon of Harry’s imagination was, meanwhile, as nasty as he had always been, with a greying, bristly moustache which curled just so, so that it complimented Uncle Vernon’s regular resemblance to an overlarge red turnip. 

He didn’t know what to make of Aunt Petunia. Harry felt certain that she must surely have been the one to insist on finalising the formal adoption process to make Harry a part of the family, but why would she have done that? Why even fight for his life support, those first few months? He would not previously have thought the Dursleys - any of them - capable of caring about him like that. Uncle Vernon, after all, had dropped Harry at King’s Cross that first year, fully believing that there was no platform nine-and-three-quarters to be found, and that Harry would have to find his way back to Surrey from King’s Cross Station in London. Even to be cared about, to that extent, was so alien to him … 

Harry had decided that it was best not to initiate contact only because Aunt Petunia had not initiated contact with him. 

In preparation for leaving, Harry packed up what little belongings he owned, picking through the cupboards to see what was left, after eight years spent comatose. Hedwig must have been sold, or given away (he felt a pang, thinking of her - was she still alive, after all?). Nothing of his trunk or spellbooks remained. What Harry had was his glasses; the sellotape that held them together; a very small amount of money (he wondered, idly, where the pocketful of galleons he’d had on him while running face-first at the wall had disappeared to); a small suitcase of clothing which Aunt Petunia seemed to have haphazardly packed for him years and years ago, mostly full of what resembled elephant skins - her first attempts at turning Dudley’s old clothes grey, for his Smeltings uniform. It was a good thing that Dudley had always been so large around the middle because it meant that his clothes fit Harry’s skinny frame, even still - Harry closed his curtains for a bit of privacy (even though it was a separate room, his door had to remain open), pulled a depressing-looking circus tent over his head and had some difficulty getting into Dudley’s old trousers, because he kept putting both legs into the one hole. 

Nurse Clougherty had invited himself over from The Royal Free to see Harry off, because he had been Harry’s caseworker for so long; most of the signatures they needed on the paperwork were his. Harry decided to wait in the main lobby, so that he could listen in on the hushed conversations they were having about his speedy recovery, feeling very much like he was being scrutinised for his suspicious lack of muscle atrophy. Clougherty thought that there had always been something a bit strange about Harry - the Dursleys were a very nice family, he said, and they hadn’t seemed to want anything to do with the boy. The severe nurses that had been helping with Harry’s rehabilitation were not very impressed with this theory, and suggested that perhaps that had been a sign of abuse and a good indicator of how Harry had managed to ‘accidentally’ run head-first into a wall. (This was unfair, thought Harry - many of the things the Dursleys had done had been unkind, but they had never made him run head-first at a wall. That had been something he’d done entirely of his own volition, and - according to his memory - he’d done it more than a handful of times). 

“It’s just strange, is what I’m saying,” Clougherty said, defensively but at least more quietly, when the conversation reached its climax and Mrs Matheiu yelled at them to be quiet, because some people were trying to get some rest from all this ‘bloody chaos’. “They’re not a bad family, and they won’t go near him. Have you seen the lady, come to pick him up?” 

“Someone’s here?” Harry inserted, curiosity ignited. Who would have come? 

”Your grandma, I reckon,” said Clougherty. He resigned himself to signing on the dotted line, back at finished the paperwork - he seemed to be greatly enjoying the chance to gossip about things, and was thrilled to hear that Harry hadn’t any idea who was out there, either. “Salt and pepper. Can’t give a straight answer to save her life - you’re eating okay?” 

“Yeah,” said Harry, absently, and Clougherty checked a box. Harry thought immediately of Aunt Petunia - of the picture he’d had of the aging, thin woman, strands of her perfectly-maintained black hair disobediently turning grey. “Do you know anything else about her?” 

Clougherty pulled a face. “Dunno. She was waiting for some bloke.” 

”Come back if you don’t know them, dear. You don’t have to go with them just because they’re here for you,” one of the more kind nurses told Harry. She touched his shoulder, perhaps aware of how Harry was reeling, unsure of what he would do when he stepped out of this hospital. He’d been itching to be released, but what was he going to do once he was out? One second he’d been an eleven-year-old boy and now here he was, in an 18-year-old’s body, and he knew that he had lived those many years out and grown and matured throughout them but all of that was false. That world that he’d lived in wasn’t real - or at least it wasn’t all real. Clougherty stopped, and looked at him, now that he got a better look at Harry’s face. 

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked. Harry thought, vividly, of Stan Shunpike, the Knightbus conductor, and wished that he hadn’t; now that he compared the two he could almost see how he must have made Shunpike up, projecting Clougherty’s pimply face onto Stan’s thin frame. How easy it must have been, to make up the entire magical world. Harry felt like a fool. Something must have been real, but even so - so what? The world that he imagined was so fantastically unreal, it was obviously not real. It had never been real. 

“Yeah,” he said, feeling a bit childish for how defensive it sounded. Harry wiped his sweaty hands on the insides of his pockets. 

“Alright,” Clougherty said. He handed the clipboard back across to the nurse on the other side of the desk - “Well, you’re officially discharged. Can I walk you out?” 

”No,” Harry decided, instantly. “No, thanks. I can manage. Thanks a lot.” 

He fastened his grip on the little suitcase’s handle, and wished he had his trunk or his wand or his friends or his reality, and he left.


	4. Hogwarts

The main foyer of Edgware Community Hospital was a large, warm room lined with squishy armchairs low to the ground. Harry passed a young family who’d dragged three of the seats around so that they could sit in a little group, around their 14- or 15-year-old son, who was confined to a wheelchair. They were laughing, absorbed in the little world they had created for themselves - the boy shot Harry a brilliant smile, which Harry suspected was an involuntary spasm, but he returned it. The mother nodded to him. Harry was an outsider looking in, into the reality of a supportive family, a group of people who cared for one another. 

He had, Harry thought to himself, had one of those (a group of people who cared for one another), just last week. 

Harry passed through emergency and out into the front carpark of the hospital, which was currently populated with a handful of ambulances not currently in use and various cars of all shapes and sizes. It was approaching the eveningtime. Birds twittered from branch to branch, not bothered by the hustle and bustle of a busy hospital carpark. Harry saw a small, tawny cat dart across the street. There, on the corner, was a motorbike, so enormous that Harry instinctively thought of Hagrid astride it, and of their escape from Privet Drive … 

Just as he was deciding that Clougherty must have been mistaken about someone waiting for him, Harry bent down to pick up the little suitcase by its handle (no idea where he was going - what would happen now - who he would turn to), and - 

”There you are, Mr Potter!” 

Harry stopped short, and spun, alarmed. It seemed so obvious, the moment that he saw her: a woman in dark, emerald clothes, her salt-and-pepper tied up in a characteristically tight bun …. he had seen her cross the street, just a second ago. Harry felt some flood of relief right in the bottom of his stomach: “Professor McGonagall.” Even seeing her made Harry feel better, like coming home - it gushed up inside of him, affection for his head of house at Hogwarts making him feel rather empty-handed, like he ought to have bought her flowers for visiting him in hospital. 

Professor McGonagall was looking at him rather strangely. “Well - yes,” she said, awkwardly. She was probably fairly taken aback by the thrill of recognition that had shot through him, because - Harry realised, belatedly - she was likely just as familiar with him as Ron and Hermione had been. All Harry was, to this Professor McGonagall, was a young boy who’d never gone to Hogwarts (if it was real at all), and never entered under her care in Gryffindor, and never done anything extraordinary besides allowing his parents to be murdered by the most powerful dark wizard of the age. She reached out to catch at Harry’s shoulder, anyway, as though she could check him over just by holding him - she beat at some imaginary dust on his collar. “Oh, look at you,” she tutted, “You’ve grown, Potter. You look just like -”

“My father,” Harry agreed, readily, and felt as though he might cry with the knowledge that Professor McGonagall was still Professor McGonagall, and at least some version of her was real - “I know. I look just like my dad - except my eyes. I’ve got my mother’s eyes.” 

“Yes,” she agreed. As surprised as McGonagall sounded, she didn’t seem to want to pursue it. Not here, at least. She stooped to collect Harry’s suitcase, herself (Harry felt a pang of guilt - he should have been carrying it - but she had beaten him to it) and seized his elbow, looking around the sunny street like she heavily suspected each of the six, large bushes which formed the hedge in Edgware’s garden. “I suppose - if you’ve been briefed …” she didn’t seem to think this very likely, but Professor McGonagall had no real explanation for Harry’s knowledge outside of that. “Of course, we agreed we would wait. Mundungus...” She continued muttering to herself, pulling Harry around the corner into a disused little alleyway behind the hospital. 

“Professor, where are we going?” Harry tried, when she did not stop there - only pulled him further and further into the alley, away from the view of the street. “Professor!” 

“It’s not safe for you here, Potter! He Who Must Not Be Named has spies everywhere, these days - we couldn’t Fidelius charm a hospital -” 

“Voldemort?” Harry asked, dumbly. “You can’t mean Voldemort’s still al- ?” 

The instant that he said it, Harry knew that this had been a mistake. The air cracked like gunfire - all around them the dark little alleyway exploded with figures caped in black - there was no cover to be had, not in a lengthwise corridor like this one: Harry’s hand instinctively grabbed for a wand he did not own. Unlike the Snatchers in the woods, these men and women did not hesitate - with no wand to counter the spell Harry seized Professor McGonagall by the arm and pulled her down, with him, ducking out of the way of the several jets of red light that sailed overhead. There was a grunt - at least one spell had hit one of the Snatchers - 

From the corner of his eye, he saw Professor McGonagall produce her own wand from her sleeve. The Snatchers were aiming lower, now; Harry looked up to find himself on the other end of a wand and it was probably sheer surprise that saved him, because the man there - Scabior, he realised, he recognised the Death Eater: Scabior - had frozen with utter surprise to find Harry Potter on the other end of his wand. Then Scabior’s face twisted into a horrible smile, one which twisted something right in the pit of Harry’s stomach: 

”Avada -”

”Potter, with me!” 

Harry felt Professor McGonagall grab onto his arm. On sheer instinct, he closed his eyes and turned toward her (spun), in time with McGonagall’s motion, and suddenly he was moving - they were Apparating - Harry couldn’t breathe, felt as though he was being pushed through a very tight, very narrow pipe - he was going to be sick …. something was wrong, too. He could feel it even before they landed, because McGonagall was fighting with someone, her grip on his arm kept loosening to a point where he had to grab a hold of her and fight to keep a hold … 

They landed with a deafening crack and Professor McGonagall fell away from him. Before anything else Harry turned to face her and saw, with horror, that the Apparation had not gone well: she had splinched herself. His head of house was lying on the ground, coughing and spluttering and without the lower half of her right leg, which remained standing there, severed at the joint. It looked strangely comical, for a second, before it toppled beside her and McGonagall began to search for her wand, to repair the damage. 

Beside her stood a man - one of the Snatchers Harry didn’t recognise - who had evidently decided that they wouldn’t get away, this time. He was pointing his wand squarely at Harry’s chest. He stepped right over Professor McGonagall (pausing only to call her a name Harry did not think bore repeating) as if to add insult to the injury - Harry took one step back, hands going straight to the wall behind him, searching for something to grab a hold of. 

”Potter,” the Snatcher said, advancing on him. He was at least a foot taller than Harry, two times as broad and thrice as stupid: Harry thought vividly of a younger version of his cousin, Dudley Dursley. “I’ve got Potter!” 

This was Hogwarts, Harry realised, with a strange little thrill, and the wall behind him wasn’t a wall at all: it was a bookshelf. Now that he looked around he could see the portraits of the several different Headmasters and Headmistresses of Hogwarts, many of them snoozing through these events (though several others were zooming around each painting, rushing to wake one another for the show) - his hands grabbed a hold of something silvery and solid, a small metal instrument which he held behind his back, at the ready, waiting for the man to get closer … 

“I’m going to kill you,” the Snatcher informed Harry, closing in now, his wand almost close enough to make a grab for - Harry did not know if he knew any spells but he knew at least that he had a better shot at surviving if he could somehow get it - the wand - out of this man’s hands - 

“That won’t be necessary, Nicholas,” said a more familiar voice, from somewhere behind the Snatcher. Harry actually dropped the metal instrument he was holding, and it clattered to the ground somewhere at his feet, a product of his sheer surprise. 

There, with his long, silvery beard and half-moon spectacles, and a vaguely pleasant smile, fingers folded casually over one another, stood Professor Albus Dumbledore. 

“Dumbledore,” Professor McGonagall gasped, urgently. She was grasping at the ground, searching for her wand, but her frenzy seemed to calm somewhat when she found Dumbledore. When the Snatcher - Nicholas - turned (he had paled so quickly Harry felt concerned he might faint), Harry ducked under the man’s arm to help Professor McGonagall up, snatching her wand up from underneath the ridge of the bookcase as he went. McGonagall seized her wand from Harry’s hand and with a wave reattached the limb, thought it looked like she’d done a poor job of it - Harry was sure she’d have to visit Madam Pomfrey. 

“You!” Nicholas spat, at Dumbledore. 

“Me,” Dumbledore repeated, pleasantly. 

“Professor Dumbledore,” Harry said, with McGonagall’s arms still wrapped around his shoulders - she was pulling away, now, batting at Harry’s hands (“I am perfectly capable, thank you, Mr Potter,”). His hands hovered absently by her waist, to ensure she stayed upright. “What’s going on?” 

“It seems Professor McGonagall is in need of the Hospital Wing of our school, Harry. Would you be so kind as to escort her?” Dumbledore suggested it kindly, peering at Harry down his long, crooked nose. 

“He knows me, Albus. I thought it was Mundungus -” McGonagall was saying, urgently, at Harry’s side. Dumbledore held up a hand, and she fell silent. 

“I must attend to our guest, Minerva. I would like Madam Pomfrey to examine the both of you.” This seemed to be some kind of code. Harry felt a twinge of annoyance at being cut out of the conversation, like he couldn’t hear what was being said - Professor Dumbledore wanted Madam Pomfrey to examine him. Why? Was there some medical thing that could have happened - would she be able to tell him why he had spent the last eight years completely unfamiliar with the Wizarding world, yet he had managed to imagine it so vividly he knew the details right down to names, and personalities? History - spells - even the layout of Dumbledore’s office? 

“Professor,” Harry pressed - 

“Minerva will be kind enough to show you the way, Harry. We can discuss this further once we’ve all slept.” It was so final that Harry felt unable to argue. He swore to himself that this wasn’t good enough - he would make sure Dumbledore answered his question, even if he wouldn’t do it now. Harry had spent too many years without answers … but he could go without for a night. 

Professor McGonagall seemed to have reached the same conclusion - she pulled Harry just enough to stir him: “It’s this way, Potter.” 

“I know,” he agreed, absently, and reached around her to open the door. Hogwarts’ layout was identical, too: Harry walked the familiar halls, unsurprised by the twists and turns. He even helped McGonagall to skip the trick step at the bottom of the staircase he knew liked to occasionally disappear its final step. When they reached the Hospital Wing, Madam Pomfrey at once hurried Professor McGonagall into a bed and left Harry (not unkindly) with instructions to get himself changed and set himself up somewhere - she’d have to treat McGonagall first. Harry had had enough experience in the Hospital Wing to find a set of pajamas and draw his curtains to get changed. It felt very odd, standing in Hogwarts’ Hospital Wing again - strange, to be getting changed like this with the knowledge that there was nobody in the whole Wizarding World who knew who he was, and even Ron and Hermione wouldn’t be visiting. Maybe he would ring Hermione again, once he was out of Hogwarts … maybe they could start again … 

Suddenly, with a desperate lurch in his stomach, Harry felt lonely - as lonely as he had ever felt. Even lonelier than he had been when he’d lived with the Dursleys and had not known of magic, or Hogwarts, or the Wizarding World. At least then, he hadn’t lost anybody. He missed being able to talk to his friends. He was finding it hard to even imagine what they would say - Ron would tell him, “Well, they can’t all have forgotten you, can they?”, and he could just imagine the books and books Hermione would recommend, the research she’d promise to do … research which ultimately would have made Harry feel better, even if it didn’t produce an answer. He pulled the curtains open again and crawled into his bed. 

What was real? What wasn’t? He didn’t even know if his version of reality did have grounding: there seemed to be the same sort of people around, but in his reality Dumbledore was dead. Who else was here? Was Sirius alive - was Dobby? Hedwig, somewhere, on someone else’s shoulder, nipping their fingers? 

That night, Harry lay tossing and turning between his sheets, unable to get to sleep. No matter how hard he tried to settle it, his mind kept wandering back to something that Dumbledore - or at least the Dumbledore Harry remembered - had said to him, not even six months ago, now:

_Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?_


End file.
